Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

idiallo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 458 posts

Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#201

Post by stronglikedan »

crispyambulance wrote: post #178

My parents had been running their own tailor shop in the 80's, barely making ends meet, pulling in less than $20K a year. It wasn't for lack of business, father was a master tailor trained in Italy and capable of elite bespoke craftsmanship. They had as much business as they could handle. The problem was that they were charging what they thought the work was worth rather than what their customers were willing to pay.…

But also, charge accordingly, if you don't have to post your prices (as your parents probably did). A lawyer is likely willing to pay a lot more for the same website than a tailor shop, and I'll gladly take both of their money.

Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#202

Post by gk1 »

aplummer wrote: post #85
gk1 wrote: post #71

Great illustration of why hourly billing makes no sense, for either side. In this case, as usual, the amount of hours "spent" on the project has little to do with actual value provided. From the contractor's side, he's excited about getting 12x the original quote, instead of realizing he's been severely undercharging for his work and could've been earning 10x or more all this time. I wonder if the author will start c…

Hourly billing is how you protect yourself against a sloppy client like this, especially with unpredictability. I have seen fixed price blow up so much I would never ever do it personally - I would have to add so much it would be astonishing to be worth it.

Firstly, I bet if you asked OP they would say $18k is "astonishing," and yet here we are.

Secondly, you can avoid most issues by charging for a weekly or monthly retainer. It's much easier to estimate number of months than number of hours.

Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#203

Post by lone_haxx0r »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #199
whowhatwhy wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a company is accountable for the dollars you pay to it, and has to provide a commensurate value, or you take your business elsewhere. dollars paid to the government keep coming in no matter how wasteful their practices

That's not how people choose which health insurance policy is offered by their employer, or which private company won the contract to deliver their electricity.

You're right, at least in the case of highly regulated markets and when the state creates artificial monopolies (e.g. electricity).

I'll correct my original comment then:

At least private companies that compete in a relatively free market are losing their own earned money when they're inefficient, not someone else's.

Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#204

Post by llamataboot »

himynameisdom wrote: post #130
llamataboot wrote: post #83

Ha ha cute! Meanwhile that's about half of what we pay teachers for a full year of work tending to the emotional and intellectual well-being of children.

This is misguided anger at best, and trolling at worst. What were you hoping to achieve with this?

Oh, it was perhaps some cathartic snark that doesn't add much to the overall discussion, but considering that the majority of comments on articles like these tend to be made up of people glorifying such income, talking about why such income isn't enough, hoping to someday have such an income, or otherwise somehow on the hedonic treadmill that makes programmers some of the wealthiest workers that have ever existed on earth, yet always looking at the coder that got better stock options and/or explaining how capitalism is simultaneously the best socioeconomic system yet ha! of course every BigCorp doing little of value in the world has such money to waste...

Well, I think it's a measured dose of realism and maybe /every single article/ posted on HN about compensation, IPOs, exits, salary negotiations, etc should have a reminder that much of the world is doing far more important things for far less money than whatever ad-tech startup got some VC money from their fellow Stanford grads this week.

Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#205

Post by derefr »

dymk wrote: post #180
gk1 wrote: post #71

Great illustration of why hourly billing makes no sense, for either side. In this case, as usual, the amount of hours "spent" on the project has little to do with actual value provided. From the contractor's side, he's excited about getting 12x the original quote, instead of realizing he's been severely undercharging for his work and could've been earning 10x or more all this time. I wonder if the author will start c…

I'm gonna disagree that hourly billing makes no sense for the contractor. He clearly just didn't charge enough per hour; $75/hour is way too low for contract work, and his $21k could have been $56k at $200/hour. What if the project was billed at a fixed cost, he negotiated $21k, but the project took a year to complete because the company moved so slowly? That'd be a terrible salary. He'd have to quit and somehow bill…

I don't think that the parent means that you shouldn't be structuring your billing to be per hour/day/week of work. Rather, their point is that you shouldn't be doing math like this:

1. "I think I'm worth $75/hr"

2. "the job will take 40 hours"

3. "I'll charge $3000 for it"

but rather, like this:

1. "I think they would be willing to pay me 40k for this, and I think the project should take 40 hours"

3. "Therefore, I'll negotiate for a $1000/hr pay-hourly contract with a projected end-date of two weeks."

Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#206

Post by mywittyname »

crispyambulance wrote: post #178

My parents had been running their own tailor shop in the 80's, barely making ends meet, pulling in less than $20K a year. It wasn't for lack of business, father was a master tailor trained in Italy and capable of elite bespoke craftsmanship. They had as much business as they could handle. The problem was that they were charging what they thought the work was worth rather than what their customers were willing to pay.…

If you respect yourself, then you'll respect your work.

Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#207

Post by iscrewyou »

derefr wrote: post #200
rocky1138 wrote: post #10

This is how corporate works. They have budgets for things. The money doesn't come out of the pocket of the person who cuts the cheque. You send in an invoice and it gets paid. If it doesn't, the company is insolvent or they are at risk to lawsuits which will cost them more than your paltry $18000. But they don't even think about the lawsuit part. Bill comes in, cheque goes out.

How do they prevent paying random people who decide it'd be funny to send them an invoice?

Random people who didn't think it was funny but actually tried to make money off of this scheme: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19476018

Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#208

Post by itronitron »

_bxg1 wrote: post #90
shyn3 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some organization have this issue where you get a budget for your group, and if you don't use it then upper management will think you don't need more resources next year and will budget less or even cut from your department. If you don't use it, they reallocate it to a department that needs it and you never get it back. Another part is where if you get a hiring budget they expect you to use it because if you aren't s…

You just restated the problem in more detail. What I'm asking is, if the above system encourages managers to waste money, why hasn't anyone come up with a better system?

The money isn't wasted, it just goes somewhere else. Better that it go through you (and to the contractor), than through someone else at the company.

Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#209

Post by cmcginty »

rhacker wrote: post #97

Sometimes I do kinda wish to get back into consulting because of situations like these. In almost all cases the work is never used, but instead of bailing the company out, it's really just bailing some situation out. It's all internal politics. Back when I was in my 20s during my walks from the light rail to the office I would have constant thoughts about how idiotic programming and office work is. The ONLY reason it…

Taking a left turn here, but how is it "easy" to setup solar? At the minimum you'll need a master electrician to sign-off on your install and might be hard to find after-the-fact.

Re: I Charged $18k for a Static HTML Page

#210

Post by pbourke »

w23j wrote: post #127
umeshunni wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to spend X anyway, because the money is pre-tax or non-taxable, you can spend 1.5X-2X, so the extra money is 'free'.

I'm with peteradio, I also never understand this line of reasoning. Let's say the company has earned 1,000$ and the tax rate is 50%. Your expenses X are 100$. So 1,000$ - 100$ = 900$. Of which 50% (450$) are tax and 50% (450$) are profit. Now double X to 200$: Then 1,000$ - 200$ = 800$. Of which 50% (400$) are tax and 50% (400$) are profit. That means your profit is 50$ lower (400$ instead of 450$) then if you hadn't…

Think of it this way: the “cost” to realize a net profit of $450 is a tax expense of $450. What if you could reinvest that full $900 so that next year your revenue and income are higher? High-growth businesses will optimize for reinvesting because they expect the Return on investment to be higher than the return on realized profit going forward.

This is what Amazon has done for years - it generates a monstrous amount of cash (free cash flow) from retail and funnels it back into expanding current businesses and creating new ones such as AWS. AWS now generates its own surplus, so the cycle continues.

Edit to clarify: Amazon in the past has shown a relatively small net income vs large top line revenue because most cash is reinvested. It’s been a few years since I paid attention to their financials so things may be different now.

Post reply on HN